Casta Fior
Casta Fior has a lovely dining room but the menu is surprisingly limited.
There are only a few tables in the dining room and we were seated at a low table with a white leather couch and two low green velour chairs. It was comfortable but felt very open, especially to so many other restaurants in Arequipa that have several smaller rooms as the dining rooms.
We ordered the Mexican bowl with trout and a gin & tonic, and the prawn ravioli with a beer. The Mexican bowl was very good, with crisp veggies and two generous pieces of breaded and deep fried trout on top. I couldn’t tell if the pico de gallo had beans or if the beans were mixed with pico de gallo, but the flavor was good and the spicy sauce served with it was extremely spicy. I was glad it was served in a separate dish on the side. The tortilla bowl was crispy and fresh but the lettuce that lined it was also crispy and didn’t wilt.
The prawn ravioli was disappointing, though. There were a few shrimp in the sauce but the ravioli themselves were quite flat and didn’t have much flavor. At first we thought the ravioli had only a little tomato and basil but upon closer inspection (and dissection) we discovered little pieces of white meat that were probably shrimp or prawn. Either way, they had no flavor and would have been completely missed without the close inspection. The sauce was flavorful but the ravioli were so disappointing that the dish couldn’t really be saved.
This is a great restaurant for carnivores and it does have some options for pescatarians but only one dish for vegetarians: a veggie burger. All of the pastas and pizzas have meat or seafood. Even the sweet potato ravioli is served with bacon in the sauce. There are only two salads: one has lamb and the other has pancetta, which is pork.
I didn’t do a timeline at Casta Fior because I was out with a friend for dinner and were more interested in a long leisurely meal than getting in and out in an hour. The service was good and I appreciated that there was almost always a server hovering in the entryway, quick to appear at the table if any of the guests looked around like they wanted something.
The desserts at Casta Fior deserve their own separate review
On display there are many unique creations and I wish I had been able to try each one. The ones with the orange disk are passion fruit. The yellow sphere with green dusting is lime and the chocolate oval is mocha. The marbled pyramid is blueberry cheesecake and the long red one is raspberry. The molded cream-colored ones with the chocolate disk are lúcuma, a fruit from the Peruvian Amazon jungle. The ones with Oreos are, of course, cookies and cream. The caramel colored sphere is a caramel apple and the one that looks like chocolate has chirimoya cream between the chocolate layers. The Oreo cake is an Oreo cake.
We tried the raspberry, which was surprisingly complicated. There was a cake bottom, which was perfectly thick and moist. the top had a hard layer of sugar coating, which broke off easily. Under that was some kind of gelatin case around a rich raspberry filling. The blueberries and sugar disks on top didn’t do anything for the flavor, though they were a nice touch for presentation. I wasn’t a fan of the gelatin layer but the cake and raspberry filling were more than worth it. Also, at only s/10 it seemed quite inexpensive for as elaborate as the dessert was.
